


If You Can Talk with Crowds

by goldfinch



Series: Super 8 [1]
Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Female Friendship, Hotels, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Isolation, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Prison, Rough Sex, Russian Mafia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4493277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinch/pseuds/goldfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It won’t work, long-term,” Wolfgang says as they move through security again. “Keeping him unconscious all the time. He might as well be dead.” He’s talking about Will, of course. He’s talking about the gaping space in the back of Sun’s head that is no doubt mirrored in his, an emptiness like a part of her has been torn away. It hurts, but Sun has gotten very good at ignoring pain, at subsuming it into a greater purpose. One fist clenches around the handle of her carry-on.</p><p>“I agree,” she says. "Now what should we do about it?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the plot points in this story required a lot of speculation about the mechanics of how the cluster's connection actually works. They will probably all be proven wrong later on, if it's explained at all. I did the best I could.
> 
> Title from Rudyard Kipling's "If—"

“What’s your purpose in the United States?” the man asks her. He doesn’t sound bored, only a little distracted, like there’s something more important on his mind than the thin, stone-faced woman on the other side of the counter. Sun can see her reflection, fish-eyed and small in the black eye of the security camera over his shoulder. She looks the same as she does in her passport photo, but the bruise on her cheek is still fading. The coverup is wearing off after thirteen hours on a plane.

“I am here for business,” she says.

“And how long are you staying?”

“Approximately one month. It depends, of course, on how negotiations go.”

At her side, Wolfgang snorts, but says nothing. Sun doesn’t blink. She is used to these appearances by now, these visitations, sudden as a candle flaring in the dark.

The man behind the desk nods, flips through her passport. She hasn’t travelled much, overall; she has a current business visa for China and an expired one for Russia, a few stamps from Japan, but nothing else. Her father went around the world. So did her brother. Now she will have done it too. “And this address you’ve given on the form is a hotel?” the man asks.

“Yes. In New York City.”

“What’s it called?”

She recites it, and then he stamps her passport, the machine he uses to do it heavy and clumsily loud. “Welcome to the United States.”

Although she’d given them an address in New York, she won’t be staying there. Riley is already in Los Angeles, and what Sun told the customs officer was a lie in all but name. Her brother ran her father’s company into the ground; she has no business here except her business with Whispers. Except her business with Will. She collects her bags and then goes straight to the airline counters and purchases a seat on the next flight to LAX. She pays in cash.

“It won’t work, long-term,” Wolfgang says as they move through security again. “Keeping him unconscious all the time. He might as well be dead.” He’s talking about Will, of course. He’s talking about the gaping space in the back of Sun’s head that is no doubt mirrored in his, an emptiness like a part of her has been torn away. It hurts, but Sun has gotten very good at ignoring pain. At subsuming it into a greater purpose. One fist clenches around the handle of her carry-on.

“I agree,” she says.

“He should have put a bullet in his head.”

Sun closes her eyes. “We have to figure out how our connection works, how Whispers works. We have to find out the specifics.”

“The science,” Wolfgang murmurs after a moment, and Sun knows instinctively who he's thinking about. His pain flashes through her like summer lightning, cutting down to her bones.

"You have to stop that," she says. "It is very unpleasant."

"Sorry. I only mean, maybe we can do tests.”

She lays her carry-on in a box and lays it on the conveyor belt. She removes her phone from her pocket, then takes off her necklace and her shoes. She feels lighter, without these things. “I’ll talk with Riley about it when I reach Los Angeles.”

“Lift your arms,” the security guard says. Sun lifts her arms.

In duty-free she picks up a bluetooth headset, but when she turns around Wolfgang has vanished from her side. It was probably thinking about Kala that did it; she knows what happened between them the way she knows what has happened between Riley and Will, or Lito and Wolfgang, or any of the others. But knowledge is not instinctive. She knows because she visited them, and this information was shared with her. Sometimes it was voluntary, but sometimes it was only accidental. If Will knows something Whispers will know it too. But if Will knows nothing, if he visits no one….

She lets the idea turn in her head as she boards her next plane, as she watches the safety demonstration, as she orders a glass of water from the airline stewardess. 

The woman beside her has one glass of wine, and then another. “If we go down,” she says, turning toward Sun, “you’d better fucking help me with my mask before you do yours.”

Sun looks at her. She cannot feel this woman’s mind or know her thoughts but she can read her body, her flat mouth, her bright eyes. Sun has spent her entire adult life deciphering the courtesy of Japanese businessmen, her entire childhood deciphering her father. “If we go down,” she says, “I don’t believe oxygen masks will help either one of us.”

The sun is setting as they approach Los Angeles. She has a window seat—first class; she can still afford small luxuries—and with the window screen up she can see the tumult of clouds below the length of the wing, kicked up in ragged eddies huge as mountains. Perhaps that is Capheus’ awe swelling in her chest, and why she clamps down on it so harshly as the plane begins to descend. The rattling roar of the engine and the plane’s body, the power, coasting down out of the sky and into view of the city. This time all she has to do is change a few ten thousand won notes and walk out to the taxi stand. The woman who sat next to her on the plane—her name is Christine; she has two dogs—comes out alongside her, and waves her off. Sun nods. But the taxi has tinted windows, and she isn’t sure if the other woman sees at all.

The address Riley gave her is not even in the city, but a hotel off the highway north called Super 8. It seems clean enough, though it’s not up to Sun’s usual standards, but she forgets about all of that when Riley opens the door and pulls her into her arms. Sun has never been a physical person. In South Korea it’s common to hold hands and link arms with your friends, and Sun did a bit of that when she was younger, but as an executive at a major company it seemed childish. And her fists are for fighting, these days, not for holding hands. Even in prison, with Soo-Jin, she didn’t reach out. But Riley is warm and small when Sun lays her hands on the other woman’s shoulders, and her grip is strong. Sun can feel Riley’s relief and joy in her own heart. Mirror neurons. Empathy.

“It is strange to say I’ve missed you?” Riley asks, pulling back.

Sun smiles a little, and shakes her head. “Not at all. I have missed you as well.”

The room is clean, but untidied, Riley’s bags lying open against the walls and fast-food wrappers stuffed into containers for Chinese take-out. Will lies stretched out on one of the beds, eyes closed, hands folded. He looks like he’s lying in a coffin. Even his skin is paler than it was. “The medicine’s running out,” Riley says, when she sees what Sun’s looking at. “I’ve only got enough for a few more days.”

Sun moves toward him, and reaches out to brush his arms down to his sides. Better. “Wolfgang and I discussed this at the airport,” she says. “And later I thought, if we isolate Will, and don’t tell him where he is, and if he does not travel about, maybe that way we don’t have to keep him unconscious until Whispers has been dealt with.” Dealt with. That is such a polite phrase for what Sun plans to do to him. He has tried to maim them, has tried to cut the tethers that anchor them to one another. She will burn Whispers’ influence to the ground. She will pummel his face into a mess of blood and bone, the way she nearly did to her brother when she figured out what he had done.

She does not miss prison, but she misses the women there who had supported her and understood. Mostly she misses Soo-Jin. She does not miss her brother.

“We can get an adjoining room,” Riley says. “But I don’t like the idea of it. Leaving him all alone, like that.”

“Better than a bullet in his head,” Sun says, flat and calm. It’s not a cruel sentiment but it isn’t kind, either. Just matter-of-fact. They don’t know much about the other sensate clusters, but suicide seems to be a common response to adversity. It makes Sun deeply suspicious. 

After a moment Riley looks up, eyes bright. “What if we visit in person? Right now, this second, I don’t know what you are thinking because I’m not in your head. I just get emotional impressions, like sunlight on exposed film, or seeing the Northern Lights when you close your eyes. Afterimages. But right now we’re just our two bodies; our minds are separate. I think it only happens when we visit, like Jonas said.”

Jonas. The name twinges in the back of Sun’s head, but this isn’t the time to talk about who they can trust, either. They don’t even know why Whispers is going after them. Why should they matter so much? Why should he want so badly to— 

“Perhaps,” she says. She runs the tips of her fingers down the edge of the duvet. Breathes. “There are too many variables. There is too much we don’t know. It’s… unsound.” The word leaves a taste on her tongue, like licorice and chalk. “And testing any of these theories with Will is unwise as well.”

She feels the rush of his presence before he speaks, a weight at the back of her mind like a fishing lure. “You can’t live in the dark your whole life,” Wolfgang says from the other side of the bed. He’s standing, arms crossed, staring down at Will with a strange, expressionless look. “Sometimes you have to have a little faith.” It doesn’t sound like something he would say. They sound like Kala’s words. But Riley is looking up at her with terrible hope in her eyes and Sun cannot bear to disappoint her, even if it’s against her better judgement. Riley has one hand on Will’s chest and the other twined between Sun’s fingers. Her skin is warm and dry.

“I will speak to the front desk tomorrow morning,” Sun says, and Riley’s smile lights up the room. 

They stay there a while longer, but Wolfgang vanishes soon after the conversation comes to an end, and that is something else to think about, as Riley releases her hand and murmurs that she’s going to take a shower, and could you keep an eye on Will, please? That is something to think about. What calls them to one another, and what sends them away. Is it being in need and, if so, what called Wolfgang to her just then? She hadn’t needed him. Hadn’t been in danger or pain, the way the others usually are when Sun comes to them, pulled like a rubber band snapping, an ancient thread.

Another mystery.

Will is unconscious, but Riley has a laptop open on the desk, and Sun moves toward that instead. Will’s absence is a fog in the back of her head, a distracting non-presence, as though she is half-asleep herself. But she opens the computer, flicking into the next room to pull the password from Riley’s head, and switches the browser over to Google.kr. She understood English even before she was born into a cluster, but the American internet won’t show many Korean news articles at all.

And probably not the ones she’s looking for, even if, in Korea, Joong-Ki is infamous. 

All the major newspapers have an article on her brother’s trial and conviction, but they all say the same things: that he has confessed, that he has been sentenced to six years in prison. It’s longer than Sun’s own sentence by fours years. Her lawyer was right when he said they would be harsher. South Korea has finally begun to punish white-collar crime in recent years, but she hadn’t expected six. And Joong-Ki. What is he thinking? He may have killed their father, but that does not mean he is prepared for the sort of life that awaits him in prison. He is not brave or strong or determined enough to get through it as he is. He will have to change. The fact that Sun originally took the blame didn’t help him during his trial, and it won’t help him behind bars, either.

“What is it?” Riley asks, coming out of the bathroom. “I could feel that in the other room.” She has a towel twisted around her head, and her face is clear and pale. She goes to check on Will, but she’s still looking at Sun. Her hands are gentle when she touches Will, lifting his wrists, turning him onto his side so he doesn’t develop bedsores, like handling a baby bird, or something you love. Before these people came into her life, Sun had almost forgotten what that was like. Now love is what comforts her.

“My brother,” she says eventually. “He’s in prison.”

“But… that’s not a surprise.”

“No.” She looks back at Joong-Ki’s face on the computer screen, his tousled hair, his frightened look. Three hours before that photo was taken a member of the Russian mafia put a gun in her brother’s mouth, and shoved a piece of paper toward him, and made him read it. She had written the message there herself, through Wolfgang’s hand. “No, it is not a surprise.”

In the morning she goes to the front desk and arranges to change rooms. They take Will over first, wheeled down the hall in the wheelchair Riley picked up in New York, Sun ferrying the bags along behind. She hasn’t brought much luggage herself, just her carry-on, but Riley has bags of clothes her father shipped over as well as all the medical equipment. It still only takes one trip, but Riley’s bags are so heavy the straps cut red lines into Sun’s hands. It is on the tip of her tongue to make some dry remark about this, but she keeps her mouth shut. It isn’t the sort of humor Riley would appreciate right now.

The new room looks much like the old one. Same twin beds, same colorful duvets, same desk and television. But there’s a door in the wall to the left, and through it there is another room. Single bed, this time. Same colorful duvet, same desk and television. There is something about the transitory nature of hotels that appeals to her. All these rooms. Room upon room upon room. And all the people who’ve stayed in them! It’s not something she would have thought about before, but now she feels connected, in some shallow and yet very meaningful way, to all the people who have stayed before, doing business and fucking, sleeping, watching late-night tv when they can’t sleep, laughing, crying, throwing up in the tiny bathrooms with their hair hanging down around their mouths.

It takes the two of them together to lift Will out of the wheelchair, and get him into the bed. Riley runs a hand through his hair, and touches his face, and her love is a soft pulsing thing in Sun’s chest, as tender and warm as embers. “We have to do something about our families,” Riley says. “Before we wake him up for good.” Her gaze is long and distant. “When Whispers finds out who we are, and where we live, that’s who he’ll go after next. He went after Nomi’s girlfriend. He could go after my father. What about you?”

Sun doesn’t answer for a long time. Her parents are dead, but her brother…. “My brother is the only member of my family left,” she says. “I think Kala’s husband can protect her family. Wolfgang’s is dead, and his friend Felix is well-protected. But Lito and Capheus are more vulnerable.”

Riley’s frown gets even deeper when she turns back toward Will. “And Whispers knows where Will’s father is. He’s an alcoholic, you know, and very stubborn. He won’t want to go anywhere.”

“Perhaps Nomi could arrange something,” Sun says, pressing the tips of her fingers to the dresser. “Anyone, but especially an alcoholic, would not turn down a free vacation to, say, the Caribbean. He never has to know. It might be enough that he isn’t where Whispers expects him to be.”

Riley’s whole face opens with light as she smiles, rising to wrap Sun in a hug. Her body is soft and fragile, but her spirit is strong; Sun can feel it. “You’re a genius,” Riley says, chin hooked over her shoulder. 

Sun shakes her head, but can’t help smiling a little.

Michael Gorski is on a plane to Puerto Rico three days later when Riley eases the IV out of Will’s arm, but even then it takes time for the drugs to wear off. Even then, it takes hours. They take the IV out at noon, and at five-thirty Riley goes for dinner—sandwiches from the Subway across the parking lot. They’ve pulled the curtains in Will’s room but the sun is going down outside, hazy and warm: a desert sunset. Sun waits until she gets hungry, and then she, too, leaves.

But she feels him wake up. It’s a fogged, stumbling confusion as she’s opening a jar of peaches in the other room, a sudden blurriness of vision so bad she puts a hand out toward the counter to steady herself. Her palm lands on the ragged cut edge of the lid, and that jerks her back into her own body, her own world, the kitchen, the cool aluminum in one hand, the bright slice of pain in the other. The ribbon of blood. She’s reaching for a paper towel when the hotel door flies open, and Riley rushes in. It took hours for Will to wake up, and Sun convinced her to take a walk; now her face is wide with joy and urgency, and her voice is sharp when she says, “Why aren’t you with him?”

Sun presses her lips together, presses the towel against the meat of her palm. Says nothing.

Will’s awake. Groggy, but awake. When Sun follows Riley in, closing the door behind her, she is full with the blossoming awareness of his mind, like a part of her has been returned after a long absence.

The first thing he says: “Where are we? This doesn’t look like Iceland.”

Sun shakes her head. “You cannot ask us that. Whispers—“

“He’s still looking for us,” Riley says, pressing forward. She’s already halfway to sitting in his lap; now she puts her hands against his chest, his arms, his face. “We’re still in danger. I couldn’t let you wither away like that anymore, it was terrible, but we have to be very careful about what we tell you, because—”

Will’s face goes stiff, the suddenness of it thrumming down Sun’s spine like a released bowstring. Will’s fear, her own defensive wariness. “He’s here,” he says.

“What?”

“Whispers.”

Riley’s head snaps around. “Where?”

“Beside you. He’s—“ Will shakes his head, and seems to gather himself. “It’s okay. I can ignore him.” And that might be true, but who knows what Whispers is saying? Who knows what he sees? She and Riley went through the room removing pens and stationary with the Super 8 logo on them; they removed the art on the walls and taped the curtains together with a truly alarming amount of duct tape. But that’s the danger of doing this at all. This is the risk they knew they were taking. “So as long as I don’t know where we are, we’re safe?”

“We hope,” Sun says. “Of course this is all theoretical, but when you were unconscious it was as though a part of me had been chopped away, and it was the same for Riley, and for the others. Your plan was not feasible, long-term.”

“No. I know. But everyone’s safe? Everyone else?”

“For now,” Sun says. She’s not watching Will anymore, or even Riley; she’s staring at the space beside Riley, the empty space Will’s eyes had gone to when he said Whispers’ name. Is he there now, still, invisible? Is he just another ghost they have to carry with them, like Wolfgang’s father, and Sun’s mother, and Nomi’s hacker past? These are the things that won’t let go of them, that have grown claws to keep their grip. But Whispers is killable, as much as anyone.

But not right now. Right now Sun is looking at Riley, and then at Will, and then at Riley again. She can feel their desire like a living thing between them, under the yellow light of the lamp. There is a taste in the air like dust and lemon disinfectant. She turns to go. “Remember,” she tells Riley, “do not open the curtains.”

Sun eats the can of peaches, then finishes off the last of the chow mien in the mini fridge, then drinks half a bottle of water. Then she goes out to stand on the walkway. This close to them it’s impossible not to get get the backwash of their emotions, love and arousal so strong she has to close her eyes, and think of blood, and putting her fist through someone’s face. She looks at the cut on her hand, still crusting over. The last time she slept with someone she was in university, over five years ago.

But that’s not what she is here for now. She’s here for Riley, for Will. 

Because they know so little about Whispers, and there’s no good way to find out about him. Nomi is doing what she can, Sun knows—they talked several times before Sun was released from prison—but it isn’t enough. Whispers is as elusive as his name suggests. Sun has played these games before, this attack and retreat and slow, distant maneuvering, but she has always known the stakes. She has always known her opponent’s reach in the world, their influence and desires. Whispers floats away from her even as she approaches, and he leaves no trail. And now that Will is awake, though, their position here is even more uncertain. There is a constant threat of exposure if Will travels—and Sun knows by now that it isn’t always a conscious decision. Sometimes you just close your eyes—and when you open them you’re somewhere else.

Sun sighs and leans heavily against the railing, looking down. The hotel is not very small. It is big enough for a courtyard, anyway, and big enough for a pool. She stares down into the water, clean electric blue, the color of tropics and calm, easy places. Will’s father is in a place like that. The air is hot and dry in her mouth, on her tongue, like the air in Nairobi. Desert air. Dust kicked up from the road, from the truck stop across the street. Late at night, women slink from cabin to cabin in tall heels and low-cut tops.

There’s a low roll of unease through her then, so subtle she almost mistakes it for her own. But then she hears a door close inside the hotel room, and after a moment Riley comes out onto the walkway beside her. Sun watches her face as she comes closer, as she comes up beside her, arms crossed, fingers tight and then loose around the black metal railing. Sometimes, when Riley smiles, it does not reach her eyes. Now, her face is positively ashen.

“Things did not go well,” Sun says.

Riley shakes her head. “It did, but then Whispers—Will said he was… was saying things. About me. Will said it would maybe it would be a good idea if I didn’t come see him again until things were sorted out.” She’s trying to keep her face straight as she speaks, but it isn’t quite working. Sun doesn’t need to ask what sorts of things Whisper was saying. It isn’t hard to guess. Riley doesn’t look up, just steps in beside her, her weight heavy on the railing. It’s only a two-story drop, Sun notes, and then looks up again. Riley is speaking. 

“What was the point of waking him up if I can’t even—if I can’t even be with him?” And then suddenly she’s sobbing, head down between her arms, and Sun touches Riley’s shoulder. She moves her hand up and down, slowly, the way her mother once did, the only comfort Sun has ever allowed herself.

“It’s better, this way. I believe that. What you said earlier, about him withering away, that was true. Now, he can fight. Now he can, in some way, at least, be a part of the cluster again. And he loves you. You know that. And you should hold onto it, because that is what Whispers will try to use against you.”

Riley’s voice is wet and soft. “How do you know that?”

“Because it is what men do. They go for your weakest places. So that is where you must be strongest.” 

She leaves her hand on Riley’s shoulder, but looks out into the courtyard. The hotel is clay-colored, with curving arches repeating down the walkways. It’s a new building, but the architecture is old, Mexican-born, Lito’s summer sweat and spice in her nose. 

“I’m sorry,” Riley says eventually. She’s staring down into the courtyard, her voice clearer but her eyes still wet. “I’m sorry for snapping at you when Will first woke up. I was just so afraid he’d be alone.”

Sun shakes her head. She can feel Riley’s tears in her own eyes like a phantom limb. “It’s alright,” she says. “You don’t have to apologize.”

Riley buys the food, after that, but Sun is the one who brings it in. Will can’t go anywhere himself, of course, even if he stays exactly where he is. Traveling is too dangerous. Sun has explained it to him. But being shut up in a hotel room is a lot like being in prison, and Sun knows what that’s like, even if she had Soo-Jin and the cluster, flicking around to Kenya, to Iceland, to Mexico, to America. Really Will is no better off than Joong-Ki, wherever her brother ended up.

“I brought you something,” she says, dropping a sheaf of magazines on the desk. “To occupy yourself.” The magazines are varied; cars and Time and a couple tabloids, the last because she knows Will likes that sort of thing, even if he won’t admit it. She sees Will’s embarrassed look, and smiles. “You forget I’m Korean,” she says. The smell of fried chicken wafts up from the second bag she carries, and she lifts it onto the bed. “We like nothing better than celebrity gossip.”

He smiles. ”And beating people to a pulp, apparently.”

“No. That is only me.” Sun leans to inspect the cartons, then hefts one in each hand. “Would you like chicken legs, or chicken wings?”

They eat quietly, not because there is nothing to talk about, but because everything Sun can think of to talk about is off-limits. The important things. Where they are. What they should do next. If they can, in fact, do anything. If there will be an after. She remembers sitting with Soo-Jin in the yard and realizes Will hasn’t been outside in over a week.

Will, apparently, is thinking the same thing. Halfway through his second chicken leg he sets it down, lays his greasy hands palm-up on his knees. Sun looks at him, but keeps eating: neatly, delicately, with the corners of her teeth. “There’s nothing he can do as long as I stay in this room,” Will says. His eyes are steady when he looks at her, but he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.

Sun drops her finished wing into the carton, then wipes her fingers clean. “That might not stop him causing trouble if you listen to him. But Riley won’t put you under again, no matter what he says about her.”

Will winces. “She told you.”

“She didn’t have to. But yes, she did.”

His head goes to the side again, but after a while he looks at her, face drawn in confusion or concern. “Are you alright? I’m getting some sort of—”

“I am fine, thank you.” She begins to gather her trash, and when it seems Will is more intent on picking apart what remains of his food than in saying anything else, she turns to go. But when she reaches the door, Will speaks again. There is a strain in his voice she has come to recognize; it means Whispers is in the room. He comes and goes at random, without warning. This is what Will has, now. Magazines and the whispers in his ear.

“Do you—do you think…. When do you think this’ll be over?”

Sun turns again, stares at him for a long time. He doesn’t flinch, or look away. “What did you expect?” she asks. “Knocking you out was only ever meant to be a temporary solution.”

His face falls. “I know that,” he says. “I know. I just. I want her with me.”

Sun nods, then moves to leave.

“Tell her I love her?” he says.

Sun turns back again, and the look on his face is just as desperate as he sounded. Riley already knows, of course—how can she not, when she knows when Will is hungry, and when he’s sick, and when he’s tired? Sun knows, too. She can feel him like coals beneath her skin, heat under the floor of an old house. It’s better than him being unconscious, but more dangerous as well.

Sun nods. “Of course.”

She watches Riley put sunscreen on over the edge of the laptop. The last few days, if Riley hasn’t been swimming then she’s been lying on one of the desk chairs, or sinking and rising in the deep end of the pool; she’s hardly ever in the hotel room anymore. Too close to Will—or maybe she just doesn’t want the reminder.

“Will you get my back for me, please?” Riley looks at her over her shoulder, offering the bottle across the length of the bed. The skin beneath her eyes is dark and bruised-looking. A few minutes later she’s gone, towel folded over one arm, a pair of goggles she picked up somewhere dangling from one hand. The room is very quiet after she’s gone; in the other room, even Will is quiet.

Sun closes her eyes. She can feel water lapping at her cheeks, cool and gentle against her skin. It’s like being in the womb again: sound muffled, gravity gone. She moves toward Riley’s computer, open on the desk. She logs in, checking e-mails—her lawyer; her father’s attorney, about matters of the will—and then drifts off to youtube. A cat playing the piano. Ducklings blown over in the wind. K-pop videos. Her brother’s face.

Her brother’s face.

The mouse hovers over the video link for a long, long moment. She clicks.

And finds out her brother is dead. More accurately, that he hung himself from the top bunk in his cell with a bit of torn bedsheet while his cellmate was out in the yard, and that he was alone like that for ten minutes before a guard came by and found his body. Sun watches the video, through to the photo at the end, and then watches it again. What strikes her most is that she hadn’t known. Now that she is connected to so many people it is strange to think that someone who is a part of her can leave this world without her knowing, without some instinctive sympathetic twinge of what had surely been her brother’s terror as he died. Perhaps she’d been too far away.

Like slicing her palm open on the peach can lid, this knowledge jerks Sun into her own body, her own small corner of the world, and even Riley’s consternated peace empties from her heart. She’s very cold, once it’s gone.

She has lived her whole life with fury curled like an animal in her chest, heavy and powerful, and sometimes it slips up into her hands. This is not that.

She looks up—

into a thick, cloudy, sky, but she can see the sun shining through in places. In the distance stands an old ferris wheel surrounded by water, and an old set of swan paddle-boats. Everything is dirty. Everything is falling apart. And yet there is a peace here too, whatever this place is, the sort of peace that time brings, and encroaching nature. Don’t worry, the climbing vines seem to say. You’re all going to the same place.

Wolfgang is sitting beside her on a concrete block, one leg swinging off the edge. The ground is marshy and green; the edges of his shoes are wet but Sun’s bare feet, with their neatly painted nails—Riley’s work—are dry. Sun looks at him, at his familiar sharp face, and is glad. She loves Riley, and Will, but it is good to see someone else, to be somewhere else besides the two hotel rooms and the well-beaten track between the Super 8 and the gas station and Subway and the Chinese down the road.

“ _Spreepark_ ,” Wolfgang says. His voice is quiet even in the stillness. “We’re not really supposed to be here.”

“Technically—” one corner of her mouth slides up— “I’m not.”

Wolfgang laughs. “So only I will be arrested, then.”

Sun feels her mouth flatten. Suddenly it is no longer funny. She imagines her old cell, then Joong-Ki, lying on his bed, angrily tearing pages from his books, hanging from the top bunk by tied strips of blanket. She thinks of Will, with his magazines and the whispers in his ear. “No,” she says. She will not let that happen to anyone else. “You should not be in prison.”

Wolfgang turns toward her. The land behind him is green and full of life, and the sounds of the city around them are faint. It doesn’t sound like they’re in Berlin at all. “And you never should have been at all,” he says.

“No.” She looks away. The photo she saw online was old, from before her brother knew he was going to prison, maybe even before he knew Sun was going to prison. He looked so young. She can fight her way out of anything but this choked feeling in her chest, the guilt, the echo of her mother’s voice, undimmed after all these years. “I never thanked you,” she says to Wolfgang. “For your help.”

“But your brother—“

Sun shakes her head. “You couldn’t have known.” But she should have. In the picture Joong-ki was smiling.

Wolfgang shrugs, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. Is it his own guilt he’s feeling, or hers? “Well,” he says eventually, “it was easy. And you would do the same for me.”

Something inside of her eases. The silence between them is more companionable, after that, and somehow Sun feels better, even after she’s snapped back to a little motel room off the highway in southern California, where the sun rises white into a thin gray sky and Will’s restless loneliness has burrowed an ache into her skull just the same as his unconsciousness.

 

 

It doesn’t get any easier. The emotions Sun felt at her brother’s death mellow and begin to fade, but the situation with Will grows more painful. She hears him pacing sometimes, late at night, speaking to no one—speaking to Whispers. She can’t make out what he’s saying, but when she asks he never answers, or he says it’s nothing.

It is not nothing. Sun can read that much in his face. Circles have dug in deep under his eyes, and he isn’t shaving as often as he could; lack of sunlight has given his skin has a slightly sallow, unhealthy look.

This cannot go on.

But what else can they do?

Sun does Tai Chi in the mornings, turning in slow circles just beyond the foot of her bed. She does this when Riley is out swimming. She hasn’t been in a fight the entire time she’s been here, and sometimes she watches the gas station across the street, the truckers, and wonders why there isn’t a bar in this tiny shithole of a town. It isn’t even a town, really, just a census-designated place. She doesn’t know if anyone actually lives here. They might just commute in from somewhere else. There isn’t even a movie theater.

She brings her hands up, breathes. Brings them down again.

When she opens her eyes she’s standing somewhere else, as though called, arms still outstretched, fingers still spread. It’s a small room, painted an unremarkable beige, but the walls are covered with posters and the room itself is a mess.She brings her feet together, folds her hands, watches Wolfgang standing near the far wall, half turned from her, staring into a mirror. There’s sort of a distant look in his eyes, and she isn’t surprised when he doesn’t turn around.

“Wolfgang.” She bows her head. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

Wolfgang looks up, startled. “What? Oh. It’s okay.” There are a few spots of blood on his face and neck, a few on the round collar of his shirt, and Sun recognizes the spray pattern that occurs when you’ve punched someone a few times in the face. “I was just… well.”

She lifts an eyebrow. “Fighting? You know I’m the last person you should be embarrassed to say so to.”

“Felix had to take me home. I… don’t remember it very well. It was a rough night.”

“Come,” she says, and tilts her head toward the bed. “Sit.”

He does. But he’s distracted, and not quite looking at her; he keeps touching the little bloodstain at the bottom hem of his shirt, but he doesn’t seem very offended by it. He’s no stranger to blood, of course. Sun knows this. But neither does he get into fights for no reason. Wolfgang is calculating, cool, driven not by passion but by intellect. Risks weighed and measured. He won the fight, by the look of him, but he doesn’t seem at all pleased.

“I hadn’t seen Kala in over a month,” he says eventually. “It was the first time since Iceland. I just—I feel different when I'm around her, you know? I can slip out of my life, to Mumbai, to her room, to some place where all of the shit in my life means nothing and I don't have to worry about retribution, or whether the Russians actually trust me, and I don't have to remember any of the things I did."

Sun looks at him. ”That sounds like a dangerous thing, ignoring the world. Pretending you are someone else. Once I thought the past was done with us the moment we were done with it, but I have since learned that isn't true.” She curls her hand into a fist, still red from her last session with the walls of her cell, the day before she was released. Her mother is dead, but Sun remembers the promise she made her; her brother is dead, but she still remembers the things he did, the things her father said and didn't say, what they all caused her to do. "The past lives in our bones, in our blood, and I don't believe people can change. Not really, anyway. We can try, but it is, in the end, a futile effort.” She looks up, tracing the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders. “But that does not mean we should despair.”

Sun watches his hand reach out toward her shoulder; she feels him pull her forward and crush his mouth against hers, hard and strong, soft as peony petals in spring. She is halfway around the world but he’s here, within her grasp, so she reaches for him too. She opens her mouth. “You say you are a monster,” she says. “What does that mean to you?”

“That my blood’s tainted. My family were terrible people, and I am a terrible person too. You’re… you’re right. I can’t escape it. Even for her. ”

“It is a choice,” Sun says against his neck. “Everything is a choice. Your family is dead.”

“Because I—because I killed them.” He tips his head back, mouth open. “Oh.”

“My family is dead as well. For me, it feels like a new start. It does not feel like traveling backward. We can’t change but we can move on. The past lives in us but that doesn’t mean we have to be beholden to it. And wasn’t I the one who killed my father? Wasn’t I the one who caused my brother’s death? Will you call me a monster too?”

His mouth closes; his hands push under the hem of her pants. “Of course not. You—you—“

“What does it matter that we are terrible people?” she says, and bites into the skin at his shoulder. “What does it matter if we do terrible things? It doesn’t make us any less worthy of love. Aren’t we still capable of giving it? Your friend Felix, don’t you love him?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“What is love but allowing yourself to be subsumed into another person’s life? If you want something—“ she pushes his pants down— “you have to fight for it.”

He shoves her back against the wall, hard. The only way he knows how to fight is with brute force and reckless determination, but Sun knows how to use her body, and when their movements have stopped she has one knee pressed into his back and both hands fisted in his shirt. “Come on,” she says, jerking him up briefly. “Fight. And use your head.”

He stares at her, the angle awkward and uncomfortable-looking, one side of his face pressed against the carpet. When he finally rears back, it catches her off guard; he’s in her head, and sees it, and takes advantage of it, but he telegraphs every move and it isn’t hard to get free again, and out of reach. They’re both on their feet, then, circling each other in what little space his bedroom affords them; Sun keeps stepping on his clothes, his shoes, folded-open novels she’s fairly sure he’s never going to finish. There’s a look in his eye she likes, hard and dark with intent. When he brings his hands up it’s only to fist them in the front of her shirt and drag her down with him, onto the bed, and this time she lets him, this time she lets him fold her against him, and kiss her, and when he kicks off his pants, she pulls off her blouse.

It has been some time since she slept with anyone. It is not a common thing, in Korea, to sleep with someone before marriage. It is not done. But she is no longer in Korea, and it is hard to hold to cultural norms when she is only half sure what those are supposed to be, anymore. When she’s only half sure who she is. Whose love swells in her heart? Whose worry? Whose pain? It is her own hands that reach out, though. It is her body that arches and her voice that cries out and afterward, it is her breath that catches in her lungs, and then evens, and ghosts against Wolfgang’s neck. His hair is short and filthy between her fingers. His breath comes harder than Sun’s own, but she can feel the satisfaction in his bones just as she knows he can feel it in hers, curled in her stomach, in the suddenly lazy circle of her arms.

He stares at her shoulder when he speaks, with a look in his eyes like he wants to touch her again, but he doesn’t. “I don’t regret it, you know. Killing my father. Or even killing my uncle. These were things that had to be done.” And then, finally, he reaches a hand out. His fingertips are cool, but soft. His touch is deliberate. “I would do it again, if I had to.”

“Hm. I do not believe my brother had to die, but no matter what he did he was still my brother.”

“Brothers die as easily as fathers.”

Sun blinks. Looks at him very carefully. “Yes. It would seem that they do. Is that why you did it, then? Why you slept with me?”

Wolfgang raises an eyebrow. “Can’t you just look inside my head?”

“You know it’s not so definitive. Besides, it is an invasion of privacy.”

He sighs, a loud breath that takes a long time to clear. The curtains are open, light slanting gold across his face and the blond stubble grown up around his mouth. “Being with you doesn’t feel like I’m drowning,” he says, and Sun waits. She watches him until he gives in, and keeps talking. “You’re… more practical.”

Sun smiles. Sun can’t help it: she drops her head, gives a poorly-contained snort of laughter that makes him smile, really smile. “If Mother heard you say that,” she says, half under her breath. She lifts her head in time to watch the brightness in his eyes fade, to see a shutter fall down over his face. It’s a defense mechanism she knows all too well.

“If my father saw me now,” he says quietly. And then he kisses her again, firm and bruising, until her mouth opens and she rolls over, on top of him, his wrists caught hard between her fingers.

Fight, she told him. Maybe she should take her own advice.

 

It is not a secret, what she and Wolfgang did. It can’t be. When she walks out onto the second floor walkway overlooking the pool, Riley’s floating on her back, blonde hair a halo around her head in the water, already looking at her. Sun leans against the railing, but doesn’t call down or wave. Riley can’t see into her head when they’re in the same place, but she can probably feel Sun’s resolve, an echo reflected off the blue slab of late-evening sky. When Riley finally comes up she has a towel wrapped around her chest, and her hair is dripping. The roots of her hair have grown in a darker blonde, and the blue dye has faded to a cool, aqueous green. When she passes Will’s curtained window she glances thoughtlessly in, an action so instinctive she can’t even think of hiding it.

“We can’t keep hiding,” Sun says, leaning back over the railing. The pool is clean and blue but overhead the sky has begun to darken, the liquid orange and gold of the desert sky as the sun goes down, the ragged purple edge of the mountains visible between the buildings. Not even beautiful places are safe, though. Even if they feel calm, here, there is no way of knowing what’s waiting around the corner. “We have to start fighting back.”

Riley turns to look at her, nods. “I know,” she says. Her eyes are clear for the first time in days. Sun doesn't know what she's thinking, but she knows what she's feeling, and can feel it herself: determination, exhaustion, pride, fury, the warmth of the sun on her skin. 

Riley’s so close, the water from her hair falls on Sun’s shoulders.


	2. Chapter 2

When Felix woke up, it was as though something in Wolfgang’s life suddenly righted itself.

It’s nothing compared to what he feels when Will wakes up.

He loves Felix, and barely even likes Will, but it still feels like he’s had a bag pulled off his head, like he’s been in sensory deprivation for days and days and someone’s suddenly pushed him out into the sun. He’s walking downstairs at the time and there’s an explosion of light, and sound, something that had been groggy and nauseous-feeling at first but then is such a rush of sensation and emotion that his body stops working and he falls. Sharp snap of pain. Dizzy receding lights. When he wakes up he’s lying on the floor and his arm hurts like it might be broken, and he can taste blood in his mouth, but he hasn’t pissed himself. He pokes around his mouth with his tongue. His teeth are all still there too.

“You fainted,” Felix says. He’s propped up on crutches nearby, the shoulder pads wrapped with an old t-shirt because he kept complaining they dug into his armpits. He looks terrible from this angle, bruises on his neck, the office lamp throwing strange shadows across his face.

Wolfgang blinks. “What?”

“If you were wondering what happened. You just toppled over. All the way down the stairs. I thought I was going to have to drive you to the hospital which, let’s be honest—“ he lifts the crutches a bit— “not going to happen. I didn’t want to move you though because, you know, maybe your neck was broken, but you look alright.”

“I think my arm might be broken, actually.” Wolfgang pushes himself up on his good elbow, pushes gently at the bone. No. Not broken. But he’s bruised it; his skin is tender and he recognizes the hard, painful swelling underneath. “Bruised, anyway. Can you—“ He almost reaches out, but Felix helping him up isn’t going to happen either. So he gets to his feet himself, then falls down into the couch, wincing when the cushion presses his arm. He’s not going to be able to sleep on his side for a while, that’s for fucking sure.

Felix keeps muttering things under his breath as he rummages through the drawers, shifting things around, closing drawers with the edge of a crutch. Wolfgang smiles a little, closes his eyes. The office is quiet. They haven’t had any customers since Wolfgang blew the rest of his family to pieces; he hasn’t felt stable enough to look people in the eye and smile. But he’s missed sitting down here. He’s missed being at peace.

“Here.”

Felix drops the first aid kit into Wolfgang’s lap, then sits beside him, lifting his feet up onto the coffee table. He’s wearing the most absurd shoes Wolfgang has ever seen, neon yellow with white bolts of lightning down the side, shoes Wolfgang helped him put on this morning. Wolfgang spends a few moments staring at them, at their brightness. They sort of hurt his eyes a little, but that might just be the color, and not an indication of brain damage. He didn’t hit his head.

“So,” Felix says eventually, “you gonna tell me what happened?”

Wolfgang occupies himself with the first aid kit. “No.”

Felix lists toward him, jacket catching on the back of the couch and scrunching up around his neck. When Wolfgang looks up, he can see the red pucker of a shotgun scar through the v-neck of his shirt. “Come on, Wolfie. You have never fainted in all the time I’ve known you, and you’ve been in some pretty shit situations. Are you a secret diabetic? Did you have, you know, a psychic vision or something?” He wiggles his fingers, wobbles his voice.

Wolfgang looks away. “Is your chest okay?”

Felix looks offended. “Of course. I’m not the one who fell down the stairs.”

“No, you only got yourself shot.”

“And whose fault was that, eh? Fucking Steiner, that’s who.” He pauses. “God rest his soul.” He pauses again. “No, fuck him, yeah. I’d like to piss on his grave, what he did to us, all the shit we had to put up with from him. And your uncle! I’d have liked to have seen his face when you—” He makes a complicated gesture, too enthusiastic for his chest, and winces. “Fuck,” he whines. Wolfgang snorts, smiles a little.

That conversation avoided, he goes back to digging in the first aid kit. Mostly they have plasters, and little packets of ancient, spidery gauze, neither of which he needs, but there’s a cold pack at the bottom that might work. He drags it out, and then just holds it in his hands for a moment, pressing into the beads with one thumbnail. Felix is warm beside him, sitting a little too close because the couch sags in the middle, but they are sitting in the room where he almost died. The glass has been swept up and repaired, and Wolfgang found a new bookcase that didn’t have any shotgun pellets buried in it, but there are still marks on the walls. Felix’s chest is still pockmarked with scars.

Wolfgang closes his eyes.

Before Felix got shot, the idea of telling him would have seemed absurd. Maybe Wolfgang would have let it slip during a bender, or stumbling back high one night from the clubs, but Felix would have brushed it off and they would have gone on. Now, after everything that’s happened, Wolfgang realizes the necessity of it. Whispers is out there, now. Hunting them down like dogs. And if Wolfgang couldn’t protect Felix from fucking Steiner—two-bit son of a whore that he is—how can he protect him from someone who can get into Wolfgang’s head?

“Listen,” he says, very slowly, not looking up. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re going to think I’m insane, but I’m not. This has been going on for a while now.” He takes a breath. “Remember that night we sang karaoke?”

He explains it as best he can, which is probably still not good enough. To his credit, Felix sits and listens quietly. About halfway through, he even turns and digs out a bag of Haribo bears from one of the boxes under the coffee table. Wolfgang can hear him chewing as he speaks.

“So basically, you’ve got to save the world,” Felix says when he’s done.

Wolfgang blinks. That’s not what he said at all. “What?”

“You said there was some shady shit going on with drugs in Africa, right? And the Indian girl works for a pharmaceutical company, and the Korean lady’s business distributes drugs.”

“Sun’s not really—she was in prison, for a while. It’s complicated. She’s not involved with it anymore, I don’t think—but that’s not the important part.”

“Sure it is! It’s a fucking conspiracy! It’s the _wampeter_ of your _karass_.”

“My what?”

“Haven’t you read Cat’s Cradle? Worst book in the world. Great stuff. I mean, of course you’ve got all this stuff with the whispering guy too, but.” He shrugs, tosses a handful of Haribos into his mouth. “How does that work, anyway?”

Wolfgang levels a look at him. “You think I know?” His voice is flat, dismissive, but he doesn’t mean for it to be. They don’t have any rules for this, is all. They don’t know how it works, if there are loopholes or if the whole mess is going to be just one long slide into hell. And now Will’s awake. He’d told Sun and Riley to do it, and now there’s nothing to do but go forward. He has to live with his choices, same as everyone else.

He gets the cold pack in one fist and cracks it, slowly. The cold is gradual at first, and then it’s too cold to hold properly and he lifts it against his arm with his fingertips, and nothing else.

Felix unwraps one of the t-shirts from his crutches, hands it over. “Here,” he says, “you’ll freeze your hand like that.”

Wolfgang takes it. It helps.

 

 

 

 

The sun is setting when he leaves for the restaurant, a little Russian-owned place near Friedrichstraße. He knows where the place is; he’s been there before. Even walked past it a few before he knew what it was. It’s only a few blocks from the Reichstag, and he can see the great dome of the building as he comes out of the U-Bahn. This is one of the touristy areas of Berlin, close to the Brandenburg Tor and the Tierpark, the cluster of exhibition halls just to the north of the Reichstag, and even on the other side of the river he’s passing American tourists and families, a Korean couple he tilts his head to listen to as they pass.

Closer to the restaurant, the buildings get higher, the street narrower; he has to cross over from the riverbank and then he can’t see the Reichstag at all. The restaurant is tucked between offices and a barbershop. As usual, it’s all but empty. As usual, he gets patted down at the door.

The first time he came here—cautiously, with a grenade in his pocket and a pistol tucked into his pants, both of which were taken from him before he even sat down—he was thrumming with readiness. He kept a knife tucked into his boot; the security didn’t catch it. Instead, Malina nodded, and invited him to sit.

Today, he doesn’t even look up.

Wolfgang takes the chair across from him, and as he waits he thinks of Felix alone at the shop, thinks of Kala, married now, thinks of Sun, the look in her eye when he’d offered to get her out of prison. The air smells like meat, and a spice that might be paprika, or might be coriander. The waiter, a thin, bearded man who moves quieter than any shadow, lays a cup of coffee down in front of him.

“I heard you are very good locksmith,” Malina says suddenly.

Wolfgang stares at him. “Yeah.”

Malina’s a Russian national; Wolfgang knew that the first time they met, just by looking at him. Tattoos curl gently against his jawline in alien black script, and there are tattooed rings around his fingers that Wolfgang’s fairly certain have some jailhouse significance; lines like tree rings; time sentenced, time served.

“Let me tell you something, eh?” Malina says. “Your uncle, he was reliable man. Your cousin, he was not. But, father, son—” he raises his hands as if they are scales, dips one and then the other— “they come together. Last thing your uncle said to me in this world: ‘You lay a finger on my boy, I’ll cut you like a fish.’ You can understand, then, that maybe I am not so sad when I hear he’s dead. Anyway, they were not Russian.”

“Neither am I.”

“Нет.” Malina gives him a long, cool-eyed look. “You are not. But I have a cousin in Siberia who married a man named Bogdanov. Maybe you were once, eh? Maybe your family, long time ago, decided Russia maybe not so nice place to be, maybe they left, came here. Years later maybe someone, your grandfather, let us say, worms his way into a man’s confidence, and then proves himself as a locksmith. Safe-cracker. Just like you.”

Wolfgang never met his grandfather. “Maybe so.”

“You’re lucky,” Malina says. Raps his fingers once against the table. “We have need of a good box-man. There is, you might say—” he smiles, a sickle-sharp slide of teeth— “an opening.”

“I’m already doing a lot, with what my uncle left behind.” Malina blinks, unfazed, and Wolfgang goes on. “But I guess I owe you. For what you guys did for my friend.”

“Kindness of my heart,” Malina says, and lays one tattooed hand across his chest. He’s smiling. Wolfgang doesn’t let his face change. “Also, if I am very honest, the way you killed your uncle—I was very impressed. Very flashy, all those explosions. Like the movies. Maybe not so good for, ah, news things, papers and television and all of that, but, still, was very nice. Make everyone want to look.”

Wolfgang shrugs. Malina seems genuinely impressed, but it isn’t that; Wolfgang just doesn’t like talking about it, or remembering what happened that day. Not killing his uncle, but the look on Kala’s face when he’d done it, emptying the entire clip into his uncle’s chest just to prove a point. He hasn’t gotten anything out of it except some pull with the Russian Mob—he hasn’t gotten what he really wants, what he can’t let himself want, now, after everything.

After they have a glass of vodka together, Wolfgang nods to Malina, gets the usual invitation to come hang out, then collects his gun from the man at the door and heads out into the gray streets, under gray skies, just as it begins to rain.

 

 

 

 

When Kala got married, Wolfgang had been very, very careful to stay in Germany. He’s still impressed he actually managed to do it. He sat on his bed with his eyes closed and his fists clenched, the smell of incense in his nose and high, strange music in his ears and something churning in his chest and when he knew it was over he ran to the bathroom and vomited into the sink. Sour stink of half-digested food, spitting chunks of meat and vegetables from between his gums. It didn’t make him feel any better, the way throwing up when you’re sick makes you feel better.

He’s fairly sure, now, that he’s sick. That there’s something wrong with him. His father used to say so, and Wolfgang’s spent most of his life trying to dig the words out from under his skin, but the effort’s useless; it can’t be done. The only comfort is that whatever is wrong with him, it’s the same thing that was wrong with his father.

He feels eyes on him before he realizes who it is, and when he turns, ragged office broom in one hand and no gun in the other, he finds Kala standing with her back to the bookcase, arms crossed.

“Kala.” Her name comes like a prayer.

“I thought you would come,” she says, “but you didn’t. To the wedding, I mean. My mother cried, and my father cried, and everyone was so happy but I was—I kept looking for you. But you didn’t come.”

It should sound like an accusation, but the way she says it, it’s only a statement. The truth. “I couldn’t ruin it for you again,” he says. “You deserve someone better.”

“Someone like Rajan?”

Wolfgang shrugs. He can’t stop looking at her. She’s wearing a red sari, her hair braided back; there’s a mark between her eyes now that hadn’t been there before and it makes her look different, somehow. Older. More settled. “Are you happy?”

She shrugs, arms coming up to hug her torso. “Rajan is a very attentive husband. Very kind, very generous. We’ve bought a house just outside the city, with some land and servants and it’s all very romantic.” She doesn’t say but, but Wolfgang hears it anyway. In the trembling cells of her body he knows the taste of cleaner country air, the scent of cut flowers and spices, the soft slide of silk against her bare shoulders when she wakes in the morning. He feels her dissatisfaction.

“But you aren’t happy,” he says.

“Oh stop it. You didn’t come. You have no right to—to criticize my decisions. Not now. You can’t tell me to stay away from you and then try to pull me back.”

“I’m not, I just—“ He shakes his head. If he goes down this road he’ll end up kissing her, and asking her to stay, and she’ll say yes even though she shouldn’t.

Kala steps back, along the bookshelf toward the kitchen, her sari brushing softly against the floor. “I would have gone with you,” she says, voice breaking. “If you’d come.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I know that’s what you think.”

“Kala—“

She shakes her head, a sudden jerk that cuts off anything else Wolfgang is going to say. The air is thick and still, and it tastes odd, too, of spices and a strange hay smell that he suspects is henna. “You should wait until morning,” she says after a while, eyes flicking to his hands. “To sweep the floor, I mean. It’s bad luck to do it at night.”

The dust motes are still settling, soft and particular around her face. The lamp’s on in the corner and she is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And then she’s gone.

His stomach pulls up in her wake, into his throat, and he swallows and swallows but all he does is choke on it. Come back, he wants to say. Please come back. The worst part is, he doesn’t even have to open his mouth for Kala to hear it. It doesn’t matter that he knows better and it doesn’t matter that he is, in the end, capable of getting a handle on his impulses. All the self-control in the world doesn’t mean a goddamn thing when someone can get inside your head.

Still, she doesn’t come back.

Wolfgang stands there for a while, breathing, and then heads upstairs.

Felix is sacked out in the bedroom, one arm thrown over his face, his chest rising and falling softly. The room smells like convalescence, with Felix’s cologne over it and the delicate sweetness of the hothouse flowers Wolfgang started keeping when Sun went to prison. Orchids; lilies; peonies.

“Come on,” he says, touching Felix’s foot as he passes the bed. “We’re going out.” He shoulders on his jacket, then reaches for the gun on his bedside table. He’s rarely without it, these days, mostly because of Whispers. Every day he wakes up afraid Will is going to slip, that he’ll open the door to find Whispers’ men waiting for him. It’s a low-grade anxiety that doesn’t make his dealings with the Russians any more pleasant, even if he likes Malina personally.

Felix sits up, sleepy-eyed and in the middle of a yawn. “We’ve got a job?”

“No, I just—don’t want to be here right now. Come on. Malina has a standing reservation for a table at Kater Blau; he’ll be there tonight.”

“Woah. Wolfie. Hang on.” Abruptly awake, Felix holds up his hands. “Just because I’m living with you for a while doesn’t mean I want to hang out with your Russian mob friends. That was Steiner’s deal. It was never yours. It was never ours.”

“It is now.” Wolfgang says. He tucks the gun into its holster. “Look, I don’t like it either, but Whispers has governments backing him. I need people with just as much pull. They’ve already gotten Sun out of prison.” He pauses, glances at Felix’s feet. “You need your crutches?”

“No. I’m okay.”

“Good. Because I’m going to get falling-down drunk, and I don’t want to remember most of the night in the morning.”

Felix smiles, a crooked slide of teeth and humor. “Maybe I’d better bring the crutches, then.”

“I’d probably only break my leg trying to use them.”

“Then you’d be _really_ glad I brought them.”

He doesn’t bring the crutches. There’s no room in the club for them anyway, no room for them on the dance floor. Malina has saved them a table with two other Russians, these with considerably less tattoos; not German-born, Wolfgang thinks, listening to their accents, but young enough when they came to make a difference. They’re young and friendly and they all take the pills Wolfgang offers, and they swallow shots with a casual nonchalance Wolfgang, tonight, finds it easy to match. The club is loud, and it’s easier not to think of Kala’s face in the spinning throb of the music.

“Why come tonight?” Malina asks, some time later.

Wolfgang stares at him for a moment, considering. “This girl I’m in love with got married a few weeks back,” he says. “I saw her for the first time since then, like, maybe three hours ago?”

Malina nods. “Does she love you also?”

“Yeah.”

“Ah yet she married someone else. If you went to her, and confessed your love, and she said yes—“

“It would ruin her life. Her family—they love this guy too, and that means… well, a lot. To her. To them. If I tried to win her back it would just mess up everything she’s built, you know? And I’ve already told her we couldn’t be together because of all this shit I’m involved in. And she’s already told me no.” He tips back another shot. He can’t even taste the vodka anymore, though the first few shots had been warm, without the aseptic burn of cheap alcohol. Marina’s ordered off the top shelf. “She’s too good for this kind of life.”

“That is why, in the beginning, in Soviet Russia, men like us did not marry, or married women already involved in this life. Prostitutes, or daughters of other _vor._ ”

Wolfgang laughs. “Are you suggesting I marry a prostitute?”

Malina’s shrug is brief, Russianate. “Marry who you like. Marry, don’t marry, fuck anything that moves.” He reaches for the vodka bottle, and tips another mouthful into Wolfgang’s glass. “But first, have another drink.”

Warm burn down his throat, clean taste of nothing in his mouth.

“I am glad you came tonight, Wolfgang,” Malina says, staring at him across the table. He’s just drained his own glass, and now he sets it down, carefully, the clink of it too quiet to hear over the music. “You’re one of us, now. It is good that you do this. Tomorrow, I will have a job for you.”

The vodka settles warm and comforting in his stomach. Wolfgang nods, and once he feels he’s waited an appropriate amount of time he reaches for Felix’s collar with blind fingers, then pulls him up out of his chair. “Come on,” he says, “let’s dance.”

“Wolfie—Wolfie, I can’t.”

“I’ll hold you up. Come on.”

So Felix throws an arm around his shoulders, stumbling a little already himself, and together they sway out into the middle of the room. The lights cast strange shadows on Felix’s face; green and red and purple.

Wolfgang’s blackout drunk by ten o’clock.

 

 

 

 

Light. Nausea. Wolfgang pushes himself out of bed and stumbles into the bathroom. He doesn’t throw up, but the drugs have given way to a black swamp of misery, and his right hand hurts where one of his knuckles has split open. He doesn’t remember how that happened at all. There’s a little blood on his shirt that won’t come out—he’ll have to throw it away—so he does what he can. He rinses his hand, applies a plaster, turns around.

Sun’s standing there. Hands clasped loosely in front of her, already halfway through a bow. “I apologize for the intrusion.”

For a moment, Wolfgang just sort of stares. He’s acutely aware of the blood on his shirt, of his aching knuckles, of Kala’s face when she turned away from him. The afternoon sun slants through the window, lighting up the pale curve of Sun’s shoulder.

“Come,” she says, and tilts her head toward the bed. “Sit.” She perches beside him, upright and clear-eyed. There is no sympathy in her gaze when she looks at him, but he knows, somehow, that she understands.

“It was the first time I’d seen her since Iceland,” he says. “I just—I feel different when I’m around her, you know? I can slip out of my life, in Mumbai, to her room, to someplace where all of the shit in my life means nothing and I don’t have to worry about retribution, or whether the Russians actually trust me, and I don’t have to remember any of the things I did.”

“That sounds like a dangerous thing, ignoring the world. Pretending you are someone else. Once I thought the past was done with us the moment we were done with it, but it lives in our bones, in our blood, and I don’t believe people can change. Not really, anyway. We can try but it is, in the end, a futile effort.” She looks at his shoulder, his lips. “But that does not mean we should despair.”

Wolfgang stares at her, thinking of blood in his mouth, of what Malina said the night before. When he met with Sun in Spreepark, she told him she wouldn’t let him go to prison, because she didn’t want anyone else she cared about to suffer.

Her eyes are dark, and cool, and depthless.

He reaches for her at the same moment she reaches for him.

 

 

 

 

He’s in a better mood when Malina calls him that evening, and it’s still showing when he gets down to the restaurant. Marina’s slumped a little in one of the booths, eating a tuna melt and drinking a cup of coffee. He orders Wolfgang a cup without asking, and then takes another bite of his sandwich. He doesn’t look at all hungover.

“Tonight,” Malina says once he’s swallowed, “I will send a driver for you. He will take you to a house of old Vor, a man who betrayed us. He is dead now, god rest his soul, but has left behind many valuables, you understand? Many things in safes.”

Wolfgang raises an eyebrow. “If the guy’s dead, why not just drill them?”

“Because the safes themselves are worth some money, and we would rather open them without damage. Also, it was suggested to me that I test you. See how good you really are.” He grins, and takes another bite of his tuna sandwich.

“The diamonds weren’t proof enough?”

“The diamonds were for your own sake. This you will be doing for us.”

Wolfgang thinks about that for a second, then shrugs. “Alright. What time tonight?”

The job is easy enough. He has all the time he needs. He’s always done his best work under pressure, but he doesn’t need it to do well. When he pops the last safe open, the man accompanying him—a tall man, thin as a racing dog with the same mean smile—nods, and shows his teeth.

“Would you look at that,” he says slowly, and then something in Russian to the man behind him. “We’ll be in contact. Krysa here will take you home.”

Krysa. Their names are a mystery. They don’t sound like any Russian names he’s heard before, and remind him of when he and Felix were kids, playing spy games, playing cops and robbers, calling each other Conan and Subotai. But they aren’t kids anymore, and neither are the Russians. Wolfgang has killed people, and who knows what Malina has done. Probably killed people too. But maybe it’s like Sun said: just because you do terrible things, that doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of love, or worthy of it. When she looked at him then, she touched his shoulder, his neck, and he wonders, now, what she was thinking. The human body is fragile; it takes so little to break it—but it is resilient, too. Felix survived his wounds; Wolfgang survived his father. He loves the cluster. He would kill to protect them. That, too, is love.

Like on the way in, Krysa hands him a paper bag on the way out and says something in Russian, makes the same hands-over-head gesture.

“Yeah, I get it,” Wolfgang says. “Я понимаю. Cпасибо.”

Krysa grins.

Wolfgang pulls the bag over his head. He can’t object anyway; it’s essentially what the cluster is doing with Will. As long as Whispers can’t see what’s going on, they’re safe, but if he ever did see, he would know where they were. He would know where to come.

His mind skips, then, like a rock over water, and he understands how they can win, or at least use Will to their advantage. _Oh,_ he thinks. That’s _perfect._

When Krysa stops the car and opens the back door, pulls the bag from Wolfgang’s head with a sharp jerk and what sounds like a joke in Russian—he waits until Wolfgang stands, then claps him on the shoulder—the light is cloud-dull and the air unclean, but Wolfgang looks up at his storefront and smiles.

 

 

 

 

“He’ll have to be awake for the flight,” he tells Sun, out on the sunny walkway of the hotel. It’s nearly one in the morning in Berlin, but here the sun is barely even starting to set. The landscape is dry, and hot, and the smell of chlorine drifts up from the pool in the central courtyard. Sun’s standing with one hand on the railing beside him; Riley’s leaned against the hotel door. “They won’t let you take someone who’s unconscious on a commercial airline, but you can put him under again as soon as you disembark.”

“He won’t like that,” Riley says.

Wolfgang looks at her, then at the closed door. “He doesn’t have a choice. And the way I see it, neither do you. Hiding doesn’t win fights.”

“True,” Sun says, “but neither does charging in, and relying simply on determination to see you through. We have to consider every possible scenario.”

“Well, Whispers will be in Germany, at least. We know that. They can’t take me out of the country. And I have friends in Germany, too.”

“It might actually work," Riley says, with a look of dawning comprehension. "Give us a couple days to get everything in order—and get everything in order yourself—is that enough time?”

“Yeah. It’s better if we move quickly.”

And sure enough, two days later Sun comes to him and tells him everything’s been arranged. She appears behind him as he’s shaving, and he nearly cuts his own throat. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, eying his razor.

Sun smiles a little. “If I had a way of notifying you before I came, I would.”

Wolfgang leans back toward the mirror, but even as he starts shaving again he’s looking at her. There is no evidence on her body that they slept together, but he came away from that afternoon with rug burn on one palm and a long bruise down his side where she threw him against the door. Sometimes, when he can’t sleep, he presses the side of his palm against it, warm and a little bit tender. “We’re moving him?”

“Yes. As soon as you can manage it.”

“Where are you guys staying?”

“In a motel. I should not tell you where, just in case. It’s a chain called Super 8.”

Wolfgang snorts, mouth coming open in a disbelieving grin. “You’re kidding. Who the fuck chose that place?”

“Riley did.” She pauses, then leans forward. “I don’t understand. Was it a bad choice?”

“No.” He shakes his head, sighs. “No, it was great. Listen, I don’t know how much time we’re going to have before Whispers gets here, once we set things in motion. We’ll fly him into France, but if Whispers knows about me, which we should assume he does, he’ll probably also assume this is where we’re taking Will. I’ve only got safeguards in place for the short term.”

“The Russians,” Sun says slowly. “You trust them?”

Wolfgang shrugs. “I trust them more than I trust Whispers.” And some of them, though he doesn’t say this, are wonderful. Friendly, generous people, some of the best drinking partners he’s ever had. Sun knows it anyway.

He finishes shaving, then rinses his face and turns toward her. She’s standing just outside the doorway, in the dark of his room, the Rolladen still dropped down from the night before. The light from the vanity hits her full on, and somehow she doesn’t look washed out. She stands half in light, half in darkness. Her beauty hits him in a less personal way than Kala’s, less a sucker-punch to gut than a good hard slap to the face: something sharp and focused. He wants to reach out. He wants to touch her.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he says. She holds his gaze for a moment, just long enough for him to wonder how much of his desire got through, and then she nods, sharply, and vanishes in the time it takes him to blink.

The apartment is already set up, more or less; he’s been paying rent there for a month already, so it has electricity and water; Riley can go out for groceries when they get here. It’s in a shit part of the city, but that just means it will be easier to hide the violence.

When he’s finished shaving, he pulls on his jacket and his best boots, and closes his eyes.

Riley’s smiling at him when he opens them. “Wolfgang," she says, "it’s good to see you.”

He glances toward the desk, where Sun’s leaned up against the wood. Her arms are crossed, and her face has the same unreadable look it had when she came to his apartment in Berlin. He hasn’t felt awkward about sleeping with her, but it’s crossed his mind to wonder if she does. She hasn’t so much as touched him since.

He shakes his head. “Right, so, it’s pretty straightforward," he tells Riley. "All you need to do is knock him out when you guys get to Europe. If you want, I can talk to him now. It might be the smarter move.”

Sun raises an eyebrow, a wry, dark smile sliding over her lips. “Smarter for whom?” But she tilts her head, and turns her shoulder toward Will’s door. It’s as clear an invitation as any, so Wolfgang closes his eyes, and concentrates on the trembling warmth in the back of his head, on the smell of gunmetal and shoe polish and the spicy taste of iced mochas, which are Will’s preferred drink. He opens his eyes.

“Come on,” he says to Will, jerking his head toward the door. “We’re leaving. Get your things.”

“I—what? You’re not supposed to be here—”

He looks, Wolfgang thinks dispassionately, like those guys who get caught in cave-ins for days. If rescue teams get there in time they’re still alive, but it’s as though something, in the darkness, has crawled in behind their eyes and made itself at home. Will, Wolfgang thinks, looks a little crazy.

“Whispers is here,” Will says, “don’t you get it? You’ve gotta leave, like, five seconds ago.”

“Didn’t Riley and Sun tell you anything?”

“Riley said we were moving, that we were going to—to somewhere.” He closes his eyes and squeezes, them, very tight. He keeps watching something behind Wolfgang, his gaze swinging back and forth, back and forth. Whispers must be pacing. “Shit. I know. Which means he knows. You have to take me somewhere else,” he says, looking up again. “Anywhere else. He can’t—he can’t get to her.”

Riley. Wolfgang presses the heel of his hand against his forehead.

"He wants to know who I’m talking to,” Will says.

“Well don’t fucking tell him. Look. We’ll get things sorted once you get into Europe. Riley’ll knock you out again at the airport and take you where you’re going.” He pauses. “And don’t tell him I said that either, alright? Keep your god damn mouth shut this time.”

Will looks at him for a long time, after that, and Wolfgang is suddenly, sinkingly certain that Whispers is speaking. How long has he been shut up in here with him? Nearly three weeks? It’s no wonder he’s going a little crazy. It might have been the only thing they thought they could do at the time but that doesn’t mean it was the best choice.

“You think I should have killed myself,” Will says. His expression looks dangerously close to awe. “You think I should have put a bullet in my head, like Angela did.”

This is not the time for this. “No.”

“You do. You do, Whispers said—“

“Fuck him. You hear me? Are you his enemy or his ally?”

“Excuse me?”

“We don’t have time for this. And it doesn’t really matter, one way or the other.” Wolfgang pauses, twists the knife: “You want to keep Riley safe, don’t you?” It's exactly the right thing to say, but then he's always been good at playing people, at getting under their skin. He's always been good at being cruel.

And Will's such an open book, it's all too clear when he gives in. "Okay," he says. "What do you want me to do?"


End file.
